Windows app regression: unwanted refresh rate changes

[softworkz 5065]

 

7 hours ago, 65535 said:

Under Display Control, you could let us customize which of the supported refresh rates will be considered for automatic switching. It should default to the highest enabled rate when none of them divide evenly. With that, one could uncheck everything except 120 hz and have it revert to 144 hz on playback stop, and without being forced into lower refresh rates.

This feature would be valuable beyond just addressing the current issue. A display may report a rate as "supported" but in practice have all kinds of issues that make it unusable. On my Samsung TV, for example, very low refresh rates like 24 hz add a ton of latency (fail lipsync) and force a switch to a different color calibration profile. On other displays I've experienced flickering and visual noise at low rates. So if someone has a display that "supports" both 24 and 48 hz (or 72), but 24 hz is broken, they can disable just that refresh rate and still enjoy perfect frame pacing at 48 hz. Without this option, they'd have to give up on automatic switching as a whole.

 

Yes, that makes sense, but much more in the other direction - for prefering lower refresh rates (excepting problematic cases like the one you mentioned).

The typical use case for the Emby app is having a TV connected to the machine and TVs rarely support DisplayPort, so you're limited to HDMI. And with HDMI we get a very different situation: The majority of GPUs and TVs that people have at the time of writing do not support HDMI 2.1 yet and you are limited to HDMI 2.0b with a maximum bandwidth of 18 Gbps.Only when both - the TV and the GPU support HDMI 2.1 you'll be able to get beyond the 18 Gbps limit.

=> With 18 Gbps, you cannot even get 4k@60Hz with 10bit HDR. The maximum is 8bit and that only with chroma subsampling (like yuv422 instead of yuv444 or bgr)

Unfortunately, manufacturers do all kinds of horrible things to hide those shortcomings:

• TV manufacturers are disgusing their 2.0b limitation by advertising like "Supports HDMI 2.1 features like x, y and z"
  You read it and think it supports HDMI 2.1, even though it's in reality just 2.0b with additional features
   
• When switching refresh rates  - e.g. from 4k, HDR 10bit RGB 30Hz to 60 Hz, the signal gets changed to something totally different like 4k "HDR 8bit-dithered", yuv422 60 Hz
   
• And the high edge of insanity I've seen is this:
  
  
  
  From switching around rates and resolutions, I sometimes get into the mode above: The Windows desktop renders at 4k, but the GPU scales it down to a lower resolution that is scaled up again by the TV.
  And the TV is happily pretending that it's 4k and when you don't look at this specific place in Windows, you'd never know that what you are getting is not 4k at all.
  It's an insane and blatant lying to customers!

 

The bottom Line

For video playback on a desktop with DisplayPort there are different opinions about whether it's better to have higher or lower refresh rates. There are arguments for both sides, some are saying that high rates like 144 Hz don't hurt, others are saying that it's better to have lower rates (in general) and many are advocating that it's best to have the display operate at the same frequency like the video framerate. That's why I didn't even want start into that area of discussion.

But for the major use case of the app where you have a TV connected via HDMI, the situation is very different:

Higher refresh rates often do hurt because they are causing the output to switch to inferior transmission modes (like shown above).

Since videos above 60 fps are rare and higher rates are making things worse for the majority of users (HDMI), rates above 60 Hz are currently not considered for the automatic refresh mode switching feature.

(allowing more detailed customization in the future is surely possible, though)

sw

[Thorman 2]

Ok now I understand what your goal is, but maybe in the meantime if I have "enable automatic refresh rate switching" disabled then I can use my 144 Hz display without refresh rate switching? I am under the impression that disabling that toggle would disable this feature entirely, not change the functionality of it. Am I misunderstanding this toggle switch? Was the toggle not working as intended before the update? Because I don't understand why the toggle is doing nothing now...

 

[softworkz 5065]

The toggle disables the feature.

The hard limit to 120 Hz is independent of the feature and always active. But it's just a one-time change to 120 (if above) and nothing else will happen when the feature is disabled.

[softworkz 5065]

8 hours ago, frankmb said:

I looked quickly at how Kodi handles the refresh rate switching. By default the Adjust Display Refresh Rate is off.

Check!

8 hours ago, frankmb said:

If the Adjust Display Refresh Rate is option is active, then refresh rate changes are made on playback start/stop

Check!

8 hours ago, frankmb said:

or on start only depending on the setting.

Check!

8 hours ago, frankmb said:

Then when the Kodi program is closed, the refresh rate is reverted to what it was when the program started.

I think this last part is very important. My major issue with the Emby Windows app was that it was always setting my refresh rate to 24 to play video and then leaving it like that after I closed Emby.  

Yes that makes sense (if optional), I think we can add that.

Thanks

[frankmb 41]

15 hours ago, softworkz said:

What I'm hoping for instead is an opportunity to borrow a gaming monitor for a few days from somebody to do some testing and analysis. There are two areas actually:

• High Refreh Rates
  and
• Dynamic Refresh Rates
  This is no longer limited to games. Meanwhile there are also some Windows desktop features making use of this, like for boosting the refresh rates during animations or other kind of situations where a higher rate might be advantageous (while the base rate remains low)

The second part is also intesting in the following way: The dynamic boost of refresh rate on-demand is a complex feature. Why do they spend so much effort on this? Why not have everybody use 144 Hz permanently instead?

Just a guess but it is probably for power savings, especially on laptop. You get the smoothness of high refresh rate all the time but not the power usage of high refresh rate 100% of the time. 

[65535 14]

I see about the telemetry (or lack thereof). If I ever crash for whatever reason, I'll be sure to report with logs.
 

19 hours ago, softworkz said:

What I'm hoping for instead is an opportunity to borrow a gaming monitor for a few days from somebody to do some testing and analysis.

That's great news!

  

4 hours ago, frankmb said:

Just a guess but it is probably for power savings, especially on laptop. You get the smoothness of high refresh rate all the time but not the power usage of high refresh rate 100% of the time. 

Exactly. It says that where you enable the feature:

Microsoft further say on their website:

Quote

Windows 11 introduces a new feature called Dynamic Refresh Rate (DRR) that automatically adjusts the refresh rate based on what you are doing at the time. This can help you get the best of both worlds: a smooth experience when you need it for gaming, browsing or inking, and a longer battery life when you’re not doing these types of things.

 

19 hours ago, softworkz said:

Why do they spend so much effort on this? Why not have everybody use 144 Hz permanently instead? Clearly because there are drawbacks in doing the latter, and that's why it's important to analyze and understand in which ways it affects our app.Depend on these results we'll figure out the best approach to handle it in the future.

So there's your answer as to why. The existence of this feature doesn't imply that high refresh rates are bad or incompatible. It's not forced on or anything (it's actually half-assed and undercooked like most MS software nowadays). Besides power draw, there's no evidence of any issues running even 480 hz permanently. Anyway, I don't wanna get ahead of myself before you've had the chance to test with the monitor.
 

19 hours ago, softworkz said:

With 18 Gbps, you cannot even get 4k@60Hz with 10bit HDR. The maximum is 8bit and that only with chroma subsampling

19 hours ago, softworkz said:

Since videos above 60 fps are rare and higher rates are making things worse for the majority of users (HDMI), rates above 60 Hz are currently not considered for the automatic refresh mode switching feature.

4k60 with 10 bpc and 4:2:0 is actually in-spec for HDMI 2.0b, but I see your overall point on why it's defaulting to the lowest rate. Displays pull all kinds of weird behaviors that might need to be worked around. All of this certainly needs to be taken into account. HDMI 2.0 TVs are going to be around for a while.

Thanks for your time. Looking forward to updates on your testing

Edited March 21, 2025 by 65535

[themlgsnejk 1]

Thank you for making the app unusable on pc! Now my 5120x1440 240hz monitor switches to 120hz no matter what i set the option to. Everything was very fine before this update, now i'll have to stick with using the browser...

[kron0s 24]

Sigh, please disable automatic frame rate switching.  Even after the new update with the setting disable it still switches my screen's refresh rate to 120hz.  I don't want this, I want to keep my monitor at the rate I set it at and not dictated by Emby!

No one wants this feature, please fix the issue and let us disable the automatic frame rate switching!!

 

 

 

Edited March 26, 2025 by kron0s

[softworkz 5065]

1 minute ago, kron0s said:

Sigh, please disable automatic frame rate switching.  Even after the new update with the setting disable it still switches my screen's refresh rate to 120hz. 

Please see the discussion above. That's the current behavior. We understand that not everybody likes this and it will be further investigated. 

I'm locking this topic temporarily because there are some good discussion points I want to follow-up to later.

This is not meant to keep anybody from complaining, just create new topics please when you feel you need to do so. Thanks.

[softworkz 5065]

Please note: The next beta will have an opt-out. 

[Volodesi 11]

On 4/8/2025 at 11:07 PM, softworkz said:

Please note: The next beta will have an opt-out. 

How do you go about doing this with a Windows Store app? I figured it was like most App stores and there would be somewhere on the page to Opt-In to the better version. But I don't see it.

I've been trying to force myself to use the Windows App version, but the Refresh rate switch is driving me insane since I am on a 4K240Hz monitor.

[kron0s 24]

On 4/8/2025 at 9:07 PM, softworkz said:

Please note: The next beta will have an opt-out. 

How do we download the beta?

[Luke 42077]

On 4/15/2025 at 9:58 AM, kron0s said:

How do we download the beta?

 

[softworkz 5065]

The opt-out option is in the new beta (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/138418-new-windows-xbox-beta-222500-beta/)

If all goes well, the stable will follow in a few days.

Thanks

[shadezero 2]

Disregard

Edited October 4, 2025 by shadezero
Found setting to bypass